


Looking for Ilos

by misseffect



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: 2 4 6 8 why is garrus vakarian great, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - No Reapers, Banter, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Smut, F/M, Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2, More tags to follow, Renegade Shepard (Mass Effect), Shakarian - Freeform, Slow Burn, we all live in a yellow submarine, will it blend? canon edition
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-10-16 03:34:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17541896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misseffect/pseuds/misseffect
Summary: In the year 2050, deep sea explorers discovered the remains of an ancient ocean-dwelling civilization. In the decades that followed, these mysterious habitats revealed startling new technologies that enabled human life to flourish even in Earth’s deepest oceans, long after the planet’s surface became uninhabitable.In 2050, we called them the greatest discovery in human history.Today, we call them the Protheans.





	1. Chapter 1

The timer scrolling in the corner of Shepard’s HUD hit sixty seconds as the spotlights on her helmet caught the man in the face. Panic bounced back at her – a frantic, white-hot reflection in his exposed eye – and a torrent of bubbles rushed out through the shattered front of his mask. Shepard ran the checks. Busted helmet. Full combat armour but not visibly armed. No clouds of blood. Interesting.

The coffee and ration bar she’d scoffed on the shuttle ride settled unpleasantly as she flipped over, floating upside-down in the water and rattling the cuffs lashing the man to the pipe at his back – like punching a hole in his mask might not be enough to drown him. So much for a nice, straight-forward recon job.

One minute eleven.

The cuffs were no regular Friday night; chunky, law-enforcement-style with all the moving parts encased. The catch in the centre – between the wrists – was the only weak point. Shepard righted herself and braced the sole of her boot against the man’s forearm, holding it against the drainpipe. His torso lurched and twisted, gloved hands scrunched into fists as he struggled. She snapped a laser-plasma round into her Carniflex and lined the barrel up along his gauntlet.

One-twenty-two.

‘Ash, tell him he’s gonna lose his fucking fingers if he doesn’t keep still.’

‘I’m trying – he’s – _ow! – ’_ Ash yelped. Over Shepard’s shoulder, her shield popped blue. ‘We’re helping you, jackass!’

Shepard stamped her foot down harder and Ash shoved her forearm against the man’s chest plate, pinning his legs to the floor with her knees. Then he began to go still. One-thirty-four; he’d wasted all his air fighting them. Shepard took aim again. The thick sheet of debris in the black water around them and the muscle straining under her boot faded out as she exhaled, and on the tail end of her breath, she fired.

The bullet went off like a flare, burning through the water and grazing down the edge of the catch. It hit the floor and ricocheted off into the darkness as the man wrenched his hands free. Shepard grabbed him under the arm and helped Ashley haul him out of the sitting position the cuffs had forced him into. One-fifty-seven.

‘Surface – now!’ Shepard barked, and the booster fired on the back of Ashley’s suit. Shepard dodged the man’s legs as the pair rocketed away from her, then hit her anti-buoy and let her feet find the floor.

His head had been disappearing when they broke the lock-down at the entrance; if it hadn’t been for the blue lights blinking in and out on the front of his mask, they wouldn’t have seen him in the frothing water at all. The pattern was broken up by the hole and the lights went out as his helmet filled with water, but Shepard had seen that symbol before – she was sure of it. Some new gang, maybe. She was out of the loop these days.

Ash’s comm link lit up. ‘We’re clear. He’s conscious but – ’ There was a burst of background noise. ‘ – really, _really_ heavy.’

Shepard stopped the timer at two-ten. The whole thing fucking stank. Arterius came aboard for twelve hours and Omega just _happened_ to spring a leak in a corridor piled with bodies? Yeah, right.

In these conditions, her spotlights had a six-foot FOV. A store-front counter-top loomed out of the dark on her right. The lopsided neon sign above read ARMAX OUTLET, though that was likely stolen along with all the merch, and the purchasing console was charred and mis-shapen. One hell of a _something_ had gone down here. Shepard pointed herself away from the distant back-and-forth of Wrex’s spotlights at the other end of the hall and –

There it was again. Another mask with the same symbol, still intact except for a spiderweb crack splintering from the temple. It glowed through the thick, shit-caked water from the opposite wall; a double-wing shape topped with two parallel lines in a vibrant, haunting green. Shepard flicked her HUD to heat-seek and turned away. The cracked glass didn’t look promising – but _where the fuck_ had she seen that thing before?

Two more bodies were starfished in the walkway just outside the cone of her spotlights. Though their cores still showed warm yellow, both had suit breaches - uneven purple like bruises - punched clean through their helmets.

Shepard gave a low whistle. ‘If this is mercenary somebody’s getting their money’s worth.’

‘Unlikely,’ Wrex grunted. ‘If you’re this good, you’re not working Omega.’

Shepard levered a toe under the bicep of the larger body, careful not to disturb the soupy fishbowl of brain and gritty seawater inside the helmet. There was a lopsided Blood Pack sigil stamped onto the shoulder guard. If this was just a good old-fashioned Omega turf war after all, Shepard was going to a lot of trouble for approximately shit all. With any luck, their newly-indebted stranger might be able to shed some light – provided they could get him out with air still in his lungs.

‘Uh – Commander?’ Ash cut in. ‘His boosters are out and – ’ Something that might have been coughing rattled in the background. ‘I don’t think he can swim.’

Shepard made an exasperated gesture _._ ‘Well, I doubt the Blood Pack carry floaties so just he’s gonna have to learn.’ No use dressing like a one-man special-ops unit if you couldn't fucking swim.

‘Anytime today on that helmet would be great, ma’am.’ That _ma’am_ had a little more emphasis than necessary, Shepard thought.

Then the double-tick of the long-distance comm. ‘Commander, we’ve got a problem.’

‘Yeah? Get in line.’

‘You’re – uh – gonna wanna jump this one to the front. Your quadrant’s going dark, it looks like they’re prepping for jettison.’

Shepard groaned. ‘Christ, gimme a _break_.’

 _Verify the lead and make it quick,_ Anderson had said. She couldn’t wait to present him with a write-up detailing how a chunk of Omega ended up on the seafloor. Not.

Shepard fired her boosters, shooting herself further down the corridor. She passed another body slumped against a crate; another clean headshot. It wasn’t like Omega looked the same two visits in a row anyway; if Aria wasn’t welding new shipwrecks onto to her bastardized kingdom, she was shaving off the bits that didn’t kiss her ass hard enough.

‘Natural selection says leave him,’ Wrex offered.

And any other day, Shepard might have. Today, ten minutes ago in a stairwell that stank of piss and old saltwater, she had stared Saren Arterius in the face. He even had the audacity to _look_ like a villain with his gloomy, wide-set eyes and bullet-grey armour. If this was coincidence, she’d eat Anderson’s fucking hat. Better to show up with one informant than none, even if all he could tell them was how the Blood Pack managed to pop Omega’s hull like a balloon.

‘Joker, bring the shuttle around to the breach.’ She turned again, scanning for more bodies. ‘We’ll exit there once we find this asshole a snorkel.’

‘And if it looks like they’re about to blast you out into the Arctic?’ Joker asked, conversationally.

‘Couple seconds warning would be great.’

‘Aye, Commander.’

‘Ash, how’s it going?’

‘We’re hanging in here but there’s not much air left – four feet and counting.’

‘Get anything out of him?’

‘Not even a name. Hope you like the strong, silent type, ma’am.’

It took them one-and-half feet to find an airtight helmet, courtesy of the legless corpse of another Blood-Packer. By the time Shepard and Wrex went for the ceiling, the man was clinging to a seam in the metal hull above his head with Ashley floating next to him, straining his neck upwards whenever a wave broke on the wall.

Shepard popped the jaw plate on her Death Mask with one hand and waved the helmet at him with the other. ‘Get that off and gimme your O2 line.’

His hands didn’t leave the wall. ‘Who the hell are you?’

Out of the man’s sight-line, Ashley made an incredulous gesture. ‘ _Now_ he talks.’

He had a voice like grinding concrete – though maybe it was the mask distorting the sound – and his one visible eye was a hard, punch-bag blue.

‘Commander Shepard, Alliance Navy.’ Shepard mimed a grabbing motion with her free hand, palm up. ‘We’re a little short on time, buddy.’

The triple-star emblem on their breastplates didn’t seem to be filling him with confidence. He looked at Wrex, then Ashley, then back at Shepard; faceless except for her exposed mouth and the downward-slant of luminescent glass down either side of her faceplate. Then he hit the release at the back of his neck and the ruined mask came away.

Blood was beading along a cut on his forehead – had to be glass from the mask – and there was a meaty bruise lining his eye socket. When they were done swilling around in Omega’s backwash he’d need every antibiotic in the medbay. And his stomach pumped. Underneath the fresh injuries Shepard thought she could see patches of old scarring and underneath that, he looked guarded.

‘The Alliance pulled out of Omega eight months ago. It was part of Aria’s peace deal.’ There was none of that animal panic in him now, even with the gritty waterline creeping up his neck. He still hadn’t reached for his oxygen pipe.

Shepard sighed and dropped her hand with a splash. Civilian? Like hell. ‘We were in the area – look, if you feel like dying alone with a mouthful of shit, knock yourself out, but we’ve got a transport to catch so – ’ She waved the helmet at him. ‘Take it or leave it.’

Maybe it wasn’t mistrust in his expression at all. This man was _somebody_ – you don’t wind up cuffed to a drainpipe in a room full of water and corpses without pissing people off – and while he couldn’t know that they were here about Arterius, he had to know that if he came with them the Alliance would have him under a microscope. If that was enough for him to hesitate... well, Shepard could be in for an interesting day.

With more reluctance than he had any right to, the man looped his arm through the shattered front of his mask and fished the oxygen line from the back of his suit. While Shepard hooked it up to the base of the scavenged helmet, his eyes stayed fixed on her hands. She was close enough to see him shivering, pale with adrenaline and pink-nosed. Unfortunate, really, that Omega was currently cruising around the Arctic.

‘This is the part where I ask if you’re carrying anything we should know about.’ Shepard waggled the rebreather at the base of the helmet, testing the connection. ‘Before you answer, bear in mind that if I tell my soldier to search you, her scans’ll tell us exactly what you’re packing and where.’

‘Then why are you asking?’ he said, without looking up, dead pan through chattering teeth.

Shepard thought she heard Wrex snort.

‘Ash.’ She snapped her chin towards the man, then flipped the helmet over and reached inside for the comm unit. ‘Got a real smart mouth for a dead man, don’t you, bud?’

His eyes flicked to her face, landing on her mouth. Every muscle in his jaw was pulled taut as a cocked fist – and not just with the cold.

‘So I’m told,’ he said, without quite the same level of irreverence. As Ash sculled towards him, he muttered, ‘Omniblade. Right arm.’

‘Got that, Ash?’

‘Yeah, I see it.’ The man swapped hands on the wall so Ash could pry the unit off his wrist. ‘Other than that, he’s clean.’

‘Alright,’ Shepard said, bracingly, flipping the helmet back over. ‘It’s synced to our channel. Check vitals once you’re in – casualty reports are a whole lotta work, so if your decomp fails it’ll really ruin my Thursday.’

‘We wouldn’t want _that_.’

Shepard smiled with all the insecurity she could muster and held out the helmet. He practically snatched it away from her. Shitbag.

Then, the lights died. Few things frightened Shepard; darkness and silence on a submarine probably should have been one of them. Three sets of spotlights blinked on and shadows bloomed out over the water. The fourth followed as the man pulled his helmet on.

Joker was in her ear again before she had even asked the question.

‘Still a couple more units to go before jettison. I’m watching your exit but evac shuttles are firing all over the place so I can’t get in close.’ His chair squeaked as it turned. ‘Who knew this many people actually _live_ on that thing.’

‘We’ll space-walk it if we have to.’ Shepard snapped her jaw plate back into place before the water could crawl up her chin. It was going to take two fucking weeks to wash the stink out of her armour. ‘Lemme know when the last unit goes dark.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

The man’s spotlights wobbled as he adjusted the helmet. ‘Copy?’

‘Copy,’ Shepard confirmed. ‘We’ve got pickup waiting through the breach. Find somewhere to put this – ’ She fished the tow line out from the front of her suit; when he reached for the carabiner she held it out of his reach. ‘ – and do as you’re fucking told. I’ll take point, you and Williams behind, Wrex on six. Got it?’

She handed him the line and flicked his channel to mute. If this wasn’t his first field trip, he’d recognise the thick bung-eared silence currently filling his helmet.

‘Wrex, don’t take your eyes off the back of his head. If he tries anything funny, fill him with holes and we’ll ask questions later.’

Wrex drummed his fingers on the barrel of his shotgun. ‘With pleasure.’

The man didn’t check his comm link. He didn’t even fiddle with the helmet. It _was_ going to be an interesting day.

 

+++

 

‘It’s him, Shepard.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘There’s no question. The catch on the mask is locked to his ocular signature – it’s quite clever.’

Shepard puffed a sigh, palms splayed on the mess hall bench.

‘A vigilante, _’_ she muttered, ‘Christ. Just go mercenary like everybody else.’

She’d already sent Ashley to escort Chakwas to the comm room as a goodwill gesture, under strict instruction not to leave the doctor alone with their guest – and good fucking job too. Liara had, of course, recognised the sigil immediately. If the news forums were to be believed hostage-taking wasn’t Archangel’s thing, but Shepard wasn’t about to bet her medic on it.

On a hunch, Shepard had the team start with C-Sec. Archangel’s operations were too advanced for a Terminus gutter rat so he probably had a baseline of formal training somewhere, but if he was ex-Alliance he should be on Shepard’s radar already. The fact that he had picked a metropolis to work from instead of leasing a sub and going nomad might also indicate that he was sticking to what he knew. It was a long-shot, but Shepard usually got by on following her nose.

'Commander? I think I've found our man.'

After thirty minutes surrounded by make-shift work-stations, Kaiden looked brighter than he had in a week. He handed her a datapad and there he was: the man in her briefing room, complete with C-Sec uniform. 'Nice work. How old is this?'

'Little over four years.'

So the scarring was recent and – Shepard squinted at the picture – though he didn’t look much past thirty, his hair was almost completely grey. ‘Man, poor bastard. How old do you think he is, K?’

‘In this?’ Kaiden shrugged. ‘Twenties, maybe? But look – ’ He reached over and scrolled down into the text – something about a bust on a people-trafficking ring. ‘You’re not gonna believe this.’

_Suspects were taken into custody last night during an operation lead by Officer Vakarian (pictured, right) known for his involvement in the arrest of billionaire investor Olenn McKeeler, a long-time Blue Suns stakeholder, last month._

‘Vakarian,’ Shepard repeated. Kaiden was grinning at her. No way. No fucking _way._ She barked a laugh. ‘Well, shit on me.’

It _was_ Arterius. It had to be.

The brass spent more taxpayer credits trying to trace the man in her briefing room than Shepard cared to count. He was smart enough to drop off the radar two years ago before Arterius started having the officers who worked his case quietly killed or vegetated, and today that had been three feet of water away from changing. For the first time since she’d been lumped with this assignment, they’d hit some good goddamn luck.

‘Alright, folks – ’ She handed the data pad back to Kaiden and clapped. ‘Get me everything you can find on Garrus Vakarian, I wanna know the last time he sneezed. Keep it on the down-low – no contact with C-Sec. Joker,’ she addressed the ceiling out of habit, ‘watch the security feed in the briefing room and lemme know when Chakwas is done.’

‘Will do, Commander.’

She pinged the article and a still from the security feed over to Anderson. While Vakarian had survived the encounter by dumb luck, the fact remained that Arterius had gone to the trouble of seeing to him personally. And he had somehow stayed under the radar for two full years – hidden behind a fucking clown mask. Unbelievable.

For an agonisingly slow typer, Anderson’s reply was instant.

 **[19:54] Cpt. D.Anderson :** you’re joking

 **[19:54] C.O. J.Shepard :** even omega spat him out. i’m about to turn out his pockets, anything i should know?

Wrex was going over what was left of Vakarian’s kit. So far, three tabs of military-grade medigel, the omni-blade unit Ashley had confiscated, a rifle scope by a manufacturer Shepard had never heard of, and a slim steel case packed with polonium rounds – illegal in every major city. When Wrex up-ended a section of the backplate, a fistful of stim cannisters went skittering across the table.

‘Oooh, his mom’s an academic.’ Tali was hunched over two different datapads, scrolling simultaneously. ‘Aetha Vakarian – Professor of Nanoelectric and Semiconductor Physics at New Durham.’

Shepard scrunched her hair up in a half-knot at the crown of her head, then checked her omnitool again.

 **[19:56] Cpt D.Anderson :** i’ll send everything we have. stay sharp and keep him on side. he’s no amateur


	2. Chapter 2

Vakarian cut a distinctive profile to say the least.

Now that Chakwas had cleaned him up, the scarring on the right side of his face came up grisly. It crawled under the neck of his shirt (black Alliance-issue, another goodwill gesture) and across to the edge of his lip, pitted in places and pinched like crumpled paper in others. He could almost give Wrex a run for his credits on height, though he'd need a helluva lot of feeding up if there was going to be any competition on gut circumference.

Kaiden hadn’t been far off on his age. According to the profile Anderson sent, Vakarian wasn’t long into his thirties. His hair was pulled back towards the crown of his head and, four years on from the photo, raked with white at the temples. Trust the brass to miss the most conspicuous motherfucker in the whole damn ocean.

Shepard stopped behind the chair in the centre of the room. She had donned the coat from her dress blues, unbuttoned, and kept the cargo pants. It was a look she usually reserved for raising Hackett’s blood pressure – deliberately cheap and try-hard. If she was lucky it might give Vakarian a false sense of security. He struck her as the type who got by on being about two-thirds as good as he thought he was.

Shepard kitted her fingers behind her back. ‘My people tell me you’re calling yourself Archangel.’

He was leaning back onto the window, hands in pockets, trying to look bored. If she hadn’t seen him an hour ago – half-drowned and wired on fear – she might have bought it.

'Just a name the locals gave me for all my good deeds.’ He wandered over the words, like getting to the end of the sentence was a chore.

Shepard kept her smile tight and condescending. 'Cute.'

The outline of the table that usually filled the room was sunk into the floor beneath the chair. She didn’t invite him to sit. He’d only refuse, which would force her to press it for the sake of a win – which they both knew was no win at all – or concede the first point. Instead, Shepard sat, legs set well apart and forearms on her thighs.

‘You have quite the resume, Vakarian.’ He watched her, steady as a laser sight. ‘Got in with the Hierarchy at eighteen. Consistently top of the class. Scouted for leadership early on. Impressive special ops record I assume, since most of it’s still behind a security wall.’ Shepard paused to scratch an itch under her chin. ‘Might’ve made Primarch eventually if you hadn’t sacked it off for C-Sec. Poor career choice if you ask me.’

Vakarian raised an eyebrow. ‘A CO who knows how to read? Don’t the Alliance give out medals for that?’

‘Oh, they teach us the alphabet in basic.’ Shepard said, grinning. ‘Swimming lessons too – the Hierarchy should take a leaf.’

He echoed her smile, insincere and mechanical. He hadn’t even reacted to his name.

‘Your old man must’ve been thrilled when you got your badge,’ Shepard continued, sitting back and crossing her feet at the ankles. ‘Kind of a C-Sec hotshot in his day, right? Castis Vakarian – ’ She rolled the name around her mouth. ‘ – rumour has it he’s got a real hard-on for due process. What’s he think of Archangel?’ 

Vakarian folded his arms. ‘I’m sure you didn’t go to all that trouble for a bit of small talk, Commander,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you tell me what you want?

Shepard filed that change of subject away for later.

There was something detached about him; cold and immovable like a door wedged shut. Chakwas thought he was on the tail end of a pretty heavy stim crash, though he was hiding it well, and according to a search algorithm Tali was running, chatter about a siege in Omega’s market quarter first started popping up twenty-four hours ago. Shepard had hoped to find him ruffled at least, after so long without sleep.

But while he was composed, he was thinking, and while he was thinking, he would be tough to out-manoeuvre. _Keep him on side_ , Anderson had said. She’d have to _get_ him on side first.

‘Someone tried pretty hard to kill you today,’ Shepard observed.

‘Yeah, really ruined my Thursday.’

Neither of them smiled. She rubbed her chin slowly with her forefinger. Bruising was settling into his eye socket and the cut on his forehead, already beginning to knit under a film of medigel, was held closed with micro-adhesive strips.

‘That was one hell of a breach.’

‘A mech blew near the outer wall.’ His hands went back to his pockets. ‘Must’ve caught a weak spot.’

Shepard got to her feet and ambled towards the window – bigger than all the windows in her crumby Citadel apartment combined. Washed out by the _Normandy’s_ lights, the deep-sea dust became a tunnel of bright white stars. She stopped next to him, about half a foot closer than she needed to.

‘The Blood Pack stuck you with a nice, fat bounty a couple weeks ago. Fifty-thousand credits,’ she said, lingering over the last three words. ‘Whoever knocked you around must have a damn good reason for not cashing in, don’t you think?’

Vakarian snorted. He was scuffing a gummy mark on the floor with the toe of his boot, some old glue trodden into the corrugated steel. ‘The bounty was for show. Garm was always going to send his own people after me so he wouldn't have to pay anyone. He's so tight, you can hear him squeaking from the Citadel.'

Shepard glanced at him, sidelong. Sitting back against the glass took some of the height off him – height Shepard would be using to her advantage if she were him. In profile he had a slightly Roman nose.

‘And yet,’ she said, ‘Nobody stuck around to make sure you were dead.’

‘Since when did the Alliance care who’s killing who on Omega?’ he said, in that same unreadable voice. His indifferent expression was bolted in place.

‘We don’t, usually.’

He flexed his shoulder carefully, kneading the muscle with his other hand. Shepard turned to face him and leaned against the window.

‘You wanna know why you’re here, Vakarian?’ She didn’t wait for his input. ‘I don’t care what shade of shit you’ve been balls-deep in for the last two years, but I’m _very_ interested in your last case at C-Sec.’ He was rolling his neck now, left to right, slowly enough that she couldn’t quite call it fidgeting. ‘It was dropped before it got off the ground and two days later, you handed in your badge and disappeared into the blue.’

‘Maybe I got tired of booking students for pissing in fountains,’ he said, settling back into the window, eyes fixed on the opposite wall.

‘Maybe,’ Shepard conceded, ‘but I doubt everybody you investigate goes to the trouble of baiting a gang into killing you.’

Arterius operated like a puppeteer. Shepard’s best guess was that he’d tipped the Blood Pack off and arranged for them to catch Vakarian and his team with their pants down. His personal intervention must have been unplanned. It was too sloppy to be anything else.

Vakarian laughed, short and wry. ‘Wouldn’t be an Alliance rescue mission if you didn’t have an ulterior motive, would it?’

Shepard decided not to tell him that he’d been two sips of coffee and a wrong turn away from _not_ being a rescue mission. She couldn't tell whether he had expected her to ask about Arterius, but it was clear that - so far - she hadn’t said anything that he didn’t already know. He was uneasy, tucked away behind the scorn, but she hadn't hooked him yet.

‘Tell me what you know about Arterius and we’ll call it quits.’

Vakarian gave her a look. It was brief and sideways, but the closest she’d seen to interest so far. ‘You don’t have the case file?’

Shepard turned back to the window, chewing on her cheek; the side nearest to him, so he could see her doing it. A tangle of old rope and plastic rolled past the window like a dead squid. ‘C-Sec petitioned for it to be moved to the Mars Archives after the case got veto’d.’

In short, Shepard was more likely to get her hands on that file if it had been incinerated.

Their best case was that Arterius had people at C-Sec. Frankly, if he hadn’t wormed his way into the Executor’s upper-echelon circle-jerk by now, he should probably have his Spectre status revoked on principle. An alternative theory of Anderson’s was that the Council intervened directly to shut the case down, either out of blind faith that Arterius could do no wrong or because they were the ones fanning the sails. Though Anderson never had forgiven Arterius for sending his own Spectre candidacy down the shitter some two decades ago. And he really hated Udina.

Now Vakarian knew exactly how much leverage he had.

When he looked at her – finally – she understood how he might have made a good detective. He had eyes like a rip current. Quiet on the surface; quick and cruel beneath. ‘And in exchange for my intel you’ll – what? – put me in witness protection?’

‘After the day you’ve had I figured you’d jump at the chance to get a shiny new identity.’ Shepard said. ‘We might even fix your pretty face if you kiss enough ass.’

He looked her up and down, a curl growing in the corner of his mouth. ‘Look, I can see you’ve got your hands full trying to look like a hard-ass or – ’ He gestured to her coat. ‘ – whatever it is you’re going for, but I’ve met a lot of Alliance types in my time. You love to talk and you don’t follow through.’ He cocked his head. ‘So you’ll excuse me if I don’t find your offer very compelling.’

So that was his problem. Vakarian wasn’t about to trade secrets for personal gain – not even to guarantee his safety – when he didn’t trust Shepard to do right by his intel. Figured. Archangel’s M.O. was a punchy cocktail of idealism and conceit, topped up with altruism; his team couldn’t have made it on Omega without playing fast and loose with their own lives. All Shepard needed to get him on side was a cause he couldn’t walk away from.

And he thought he had her. Idiot.

She left him at the window and began to pace to room, slow and idle. Sixteen strides from one wall to the other, like the mess hall below them and the CIC above. ‘What do you know about Eden Prime, Vakarian?’

He caught his stupid sneer just before it slipped, pancake-flat, right off his face. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

Archangel had a penchant for civilians. Seventy-three dead and hundreds more injured. How could he refuse?

‘We have witnesses who claim Arterius was landside during the raid – and that he wasn’t there to play the humanitarian.’ Shepard said. She put on the voice she used in external briefings; serious, professional. Vakarian was watching her back and forth like a bioticball, the illusion of nonchalance peeling away from him. ‘Outside of this one incident there’s nothing linking him to Cerberus, so our best-case is that he’s using mass murder as a smokescreen.’ She threw in a nauseated expression for good measure. ‘That should give you some idea what we’re working with.’

As it was, no one knew what happened on Eden Prime, why Cerberus might have targeted it, or what the hell Arterius was doing there. Cerberus had cleaned out a few gun lockers, set fire to a university, cracked some bank accounts – taken nothing they didn’t already have. Video footage was abundant and, as usual, about ninety percent CG’d.

By the time the Alliance scrambled their own people, the raiders had already ripped through the habitat and left it for dead. Security in rural settlements had been beefed up by Alliance deployments since but it was an empty gesture. As usual, they were spread too thin to do anything useful.

At the time, Shepard’s team were at the wrong end of the ocean, thumbs in asses, trailing around Feron after a band of two-bit shuttle-jackers. The first witness had come forward about Arterius a week later and the rest followed over five or so days. It was eleven days since the brass hauled Shepard in. Eleven days for the Spectre to get himself spotted in Omega’s cesspool of a docking bay by a VI refueller with an Alliance control chip.

‘Now, I _will_ get Arterius whether you talk or not.’ Shepard ran the pad of her middle finger over the back of the chair on her way past, the rubber _thunk_ of her boots slowing. ‘What you get to decide, Vakarian, is how many more Eden Prime’s it’s going to take before I do.’

Shepard reached the opposite wall and turned again. He was chewing this fresh information over – literally. She could see his jaw working under day-old stubble, eaten away by scarring on one side. Archangel was good, but in the grand scheme of things Omega was small-time. Selling out to the Alliance was his ticket to the big leagues.

‘I have one condition.’

Gotcha.

‘Shoot,’ Shepard said, with a stab at an amicable smile.

‘I want in on the mission – no witness protection.’

Shepard stopped. He had the gall to look defiant, chin jutted towards her, arms folded like a petulant recruit. He was _serious._

‘Does this look like a job interview to you, Vakarian?’

‘I’ll forward a copy of my resume to your line manager.’ His tone was cool but there was an edge to it, sudden as a papercut, and his eyes were hard.

Shepard walked to the chair and leaned on the back, elbows locked, unsmiling. ‘My squad are the best operatives in the Alliance, _pal,_ they didn’t show up one morning and get their pick of the rifles.’

‘I was the Hierarchy’s top marksman by the time I was twenty-two, _Commander_.’ Shepard did _not_ care for that emphasis. ‘If you want the best, you’ve got it.’

She hadn’t forgotten the sprawling bodies and their neat, purple headshots. Her eyes narrowed. ‘You didn’t get a promotion in five fucking years at C-Sec and then quit to run around Omega in some expensive face-paint. What part of that is supposed to impress me?’

‘The part where I frightened Arterius enough for him to blow his cover,' he said, with a distant machine-gun snarl growing in his voice.

‘Yeah?’ Shepard said, suddenly quiet. She leaned into the chair, hunched like a vulture. ‘I counted eleven on your team, Archangel. How many made it home today?’

He stood like she’d stuck him with a stun-stick.

Liara had found pages and pages of amateur photos circulating the internet; the whole damn boy scout troop kitted out with those masks. It had to be one of them that Shepard had seen through the shit, the same sigil, the same flared double-wing shape – green as a Mindoir sunset. There was no one else alive in that corridor, Joker’s scans had told them as much.

Vakarian was white-knuckled in front of the black glass, muscle shuddering over his cheekbones. ‘Then you understand – ’ he said, slow and venomous, ‘ – why I want in.’

The Carniflex strapped under Shepard’s arm was burning a hole in her coat. She had Ash posted outside the door and Joker watching the security feed; one wrong move and Vakarian would find himself squaring up to the wrong end of the Chief’s rifle. Not that those precautions made his combat record any less of a statutory secret.

Though now she had a pressure point it _would_ be a shame not to squeeze a little.

‘This is a military operation, Vakarian, not a springboard for your personal vendetta.’ He looked nothing would make him happier than sloughing the skin clean off her skeleton. Shepard turned for the door. ‘Witness protection or bust. You have twenty minutes.’

She expected him to follow; maybe to barrel across the room and sink his fist into her face. Instead he only called after her, halfway to shouting, ‘Arterius found me once, Shepard. We both know the Alliance don’t have enough influence over the Council to stop him doing it again.’

Shepard cranked the wheel a quarter to the right and the door eased open. She hadn’t sealed it properly on the way in. When they were air-locked, they took twelve seconds to open.

His life expectancy would drop off the deep end the moment Arterius knew he was alive – he was right about that. Every move Shepard had made for the last two weeks was off-book; even in covert Alliance operations, Spectres could get near-total transparency if they fancied some bedtime reading. That was why Hackett drafted her in the first place and why they were running the _Normandy_ with a skeleton crew – all Shepard’s people. Fortunately, they only needed Vakarian alive long enough to get what he knew in writing.

‘Twenty minutes,’ she repeated, and sealed the door behind her.

 

+++

 

‘You cannot be serious.’

‘This is our chance to make an ally out of him, Shepard, he’s a major asset.’

Shepard threw her arms in the air and Anderson’s holo rolled its eyes. The muted blue light of the visual feed threw weird shadows into the orange hum from the rest of the consoles at the back of the box room, behind Shepard.

‘If Arterius took out my team you’d put me on garden leave,’ she snapped.

‘Then run him through psychometric testing and if anything comes up, we’ll reconsider.’

 _We’ll_ reconsider. Like she would get any input. ‘A invertebrate could pass those fucking tests. He’s a liability.’

‘Can’t remember the last time you made a case for turning a resource over to the chain of command, Shepard.’ Anderson said, mildly. He’d given up yelling at her sometime around her twenty-first birthday.

‘Option B isn’t usually giving an ex-Hierarchy marksman the run of the _Normandy_.’

A cursory search of academy records told her that Vakarian had – infuriatingly – not been lying about his rankings.

‘I’m not suggesting you hand him the keys.’

‘Sir,’ Shepard leaned over the console. ‘We’re talking about the guy who dealt the Blood Pack the biggest supply chain disruption they’ve seen in a decade. The volume of red sand coming out of Omega _halved_ in three months after their servers popped. Even Aria left him the hell alone.’

True to form, Liara had put together a dissertation by the time Shepard was done with Vakarian. Even leaving room for embellishments, Archangel’s portfolio made for interesting reading.

It wasn’t his rapidly-shrinking hit-list that concerned her – any old asshole could pull a trigger – it was the _strategy_. He was calculated, methodical, daring but not stupid. There was a thread connecting one job to another, to another, to another. She’d talked smack to rile him up, but the reality was that his eleven-man team had done more about Terminus crime syndicates in two years than the Alliance had managed in five.

And if he wasn’t insane already, a week cooped up on the _Normandy_ would sink him.

‘We’re his best shot at Arterius and he knows it,’ Anderson said, in that infuriating slow-march voice. ‘As long as he’s invested there’s no reason for him to make trouble. The enemy of my enemy – you know it goes.’

‘And if he decides our interests no longer align?’

Anderson folded his arms. His expression was hard through the deep-sea static. ‘Then do what’s necessary and we can iron out the details later.’

Shepard shook her head. ‘Y’know, sometimes I think you desk-jobbers get off on giving me your dirty work. Bring down a Spectre, Shepard. Babysit a vigilante, Shepard. Wipe my ass, Shepard.’

Anderson almost smiled. There was no winning with him. He had the gall to be a brilliant soldier and – despite her best efforts – an infuriatingly likable person. How Shepard would love to poke two fingers right up his holographic nose.

‘I’ll get his clearance signed off,’ he said, reaching to make a note somewhere out of frame.

Shepard scrunched her cheeks. ‘ _Clearance_ _?_  Seriously?’

‘He’ll need a system profile to write up the case.’ Anderson had that shovel-faced look; the one that made the back of Shepard's skull itch. That face would follow her to the end of the goddamned Earth if it had to.

‘ _Fine_. Fine.’ Shepard sighed. ‘Don’t forget to tell Pressley he’s a white guy. Tali’s access took six fucking months.’

Witness protection or bust. Nice one, Shep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unstoppable force; immovable object. Honestly, I'm not sure who is which.
> 
> Thanks for stopping by <3

**Author's Note:**

> What if humanity went down instead of up? What if Shepard and Garrus never met before Omega? What if they hated each other? What if Cerberus were in Mass Effect 1? What if Saren was in Mass Effect 2? What if Shepard was really into classic rock?
> 
> Answers to all this, and more questions no one ever asks, at some point.
> 
> Biggest of thanks to Max, without whom this story wouldn't have seen the light of day.
> 
> I'm also at misseffect.tumblr.com


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